It Didn't Start Out As Love
by Sarabibliomania
Summary: More than friendship. More than familial. She used to say that they had invented a relationship all on their own that left all the others dull and insignificant in comparison.      And in every single way it was.


Disclaimer: This is a piece that I wrote based on a fanfiction I have planned for CSI Miami. I doubt I will ever be able to write it as it's too long and I don't have access to the episodes but recently I have explored the relationships and characters so deeply that I thought I would write this as an attempt to get the story on paper. It's a love triangle – as you can see – and one of my favourite and most developed ones that I hope to write more pieces on soon. You may notice it ends kind of abruptly but that's because the show hasn't finished yet meaning that the story hasn't wrapped up in my mind but I will come back and update depending on how each episode turns out. Hope you enjoy

Also ... this character is my own creation. A character I made up myself. Not Calleigh.

P.s Apologises for editing it is 4 am here and I'll edit in the morning.

It didn't start out as love.

It was at first an attraction, a note of her personality, her looks that fell together and made his heart race when he saw her and his mouth go dry and made him tongue tied.

He covered it well though, hiding his nerves under his suave charm.

It then became friendship. Attraction was still there, noted when they had full rein to check out the other and make comments about the others appearance or sexual partners. But it was foremost friendship. More than friendship. More than familial. She used to say that they had invented a relationship all on their own that left all the others dull and insignificant in comparison.

And in every single way it was.

She was the first person on the team to tell him about her past. That her father owed a man in the mafia money that he couldn't pay. That he came to her house and raped her and her sister in front of her parents before killing them all. That she barely survived because she moved and the last minute and the bullet missed her heart. That she still had a scar over her breast that random one night stands would ask about and she would lie and say it was nothing.

It was the first time she ever cried in front of him. First time he held her. First time he vowed to himself that if it cost him everything he would make sure that she was never hurt again.

He was the first person on the team to pick up on that she was once in love with Horatio. That he was the CSI who found her and she spent her teen years hopelessly in love with him before everything that stood against them caught up with her and she found a way to move on.

Or so she said. But even after he could still see the extra care she took in her friendship with Horatio, the little notes and details that assured him that she hadn't truly moved on. And thus had truly loved him.

She was the person he went to after Speedle died. The arms he consoled himself in, the hair he buried his face in and inhaled the scent of with a soft click or thought that what he felt for her was more than friendship.

That one day would become so much more.

He was the one who took note of the changes in her face when one of their suspects turned up to be the man who killed her parents and sister. Saw the fragile break behind her eyes and the forceful steps she made out of the room with her head lowered as if she were to burst into tears at any moment.

He waited ten minutes before going after her. He knew that she needed him but he knew that she need a few moments alone first.

He was the one who picked up on the flirtation between her and the newbie Ryan. The way he followed her around like a lost puppy, a little boy with a crush.

It was the first moment he felt jealousy for her and another man. Another warning sign of what was to come.

He was one of the last ones to find out that was dating Stetler of all people. A man she openly hated and despised and all of a sudden the man on her arm. He cornered her and demanded an explanation, jealousy he didn't quite recognize pounding through his heartbeats. She avoided his questions and begged him to trust her, her eyes pleading and her fingers loosened on his cuff.

So he dropped it. Because he trusted her.

He was by her side when she miscarried, when Ryan was fired and she broke up with Stetler in a domino effect succession that led one into another like it was sequenced. Like each one was born from the event before it and gave birth to the one after. The moment when she kissed him for the first time. When for a moment there was nothing else but her and him and the moment her lips touched his.

She explained later as a half hearted hope to see if she loved him. That life would be so much easier if she loved him. Because he would never hurt her. And she would never hurt him.

He tasted disappointment on his tongue then. Agonizing and bitter.

He was the one who saw the signs when she and Ryan became more then friends. When their flirtatious smiles became ones with inside jokes that they only understand. Secrets that only they knew.

He knew jealousy then. Raw and unbearable.

He started to flirt with the new M.E Tara when she came to the team in hopes that she would notice and be jealous. Take note of the way he buried everything he didn't want to feel when he saw her and Ryan together.

But she didn't notice. Or she didn't care.

He was the one who caught her when she collapsed while interrogating a suspect, who held her against his chest as he screamed for help, his heartbeat alive and dangerous through his head and chest so that everything became a red blur and she was the only thing he could see.

His heart stopped when she fell and started again with she woke up, a small smile on his lips and an assurance that he wasn't getting back the watch that he placed around her wrist.

She was the person he thought of when he stumbled through the marshes with blood staining his side and everything in his vision blurred and disoriented. Her smile, her laugh, the taste of her lips, the scent of her hair ... every thought, every memory meant another step and another moment of survival.

It was her telling him that she loved him that he last thought of before he collapsed. Too delirious to remember if it was real or something he imagined to be true.

He was the first person she told about her and Ryan's engagement. The first person to congratulate them both. The only person to lie when he said he was happy for them.

She was the one he went to when the entire lab collapsed. All the people, dozens of them lying unconscious across the floor and he ran through the maze of rooms desperately screaming her name. He found her lying in the one of the labs, her blond hair tangled over her face and her pulse barely fluttered against his fingers.

He stumbled to the elevator with her in his arms, the toxin in the air faltering his steps but he refused to put her down. Refused to leave her behind. If she died then he was going to die with her.

Ryan was the first person she asked for when she woke up, his fingers still buried in her hair and her eyes searching for the fiancé that wasn't him.

She kissed him when a gaggle of fans on a case wouldn't leave him alone, slung her arm around his shoulders with her fingers suggestively pressed to her gun and the her eyebrows raised at them in a challenge they didn't take. A bluff they didn't call.

He pressed his fingers to his lips in bittersweet reminder for weeks afterwards.

It was his time to kiss her when she singlehandedly solved a case, spinning her around happily with a quick press to her lips that left him more dizzy then the movement had. They both regained their footing awkwardly after that, breathless with his heartbeat everywhere under his skin and aware that she was as affected as he was.

But then everything went wrong.

He kissed her again. But this time was different. This time it was his fingers twisted in her hair, her fingers clawed into his shoulders and the taste of her tongue sweet against his.

It was pure and unadulterated bliss that last for barely a minute and vanished just as quick.

She shoved him away and ran from the hospital room before he could try and explain. Come up with an excuse or reason for her to stay.

That he loved her and always had.

She avoided him after that. Made every excuse not to be alone with him, to have to not talk to him or even meet his eyes. Every desperate attempt frayed at him in bittersweet contrast.

The fact that she tried so hard not to be near him and that fact that she had to try so hard.

He could see her start to crack under the pressure of it all. Shadows started to crease under her eyes and the slightest break in a case wearing her down until he caught her once leaving the locker room bathroom with the mirror cracked and her knuckles bloody.

There was once a time when she would have cried in his arms while he held her. Now she wouldn't let him even close enough to tell her it would be okay.

She broke less than a week later. She was at his doorstep and his lips were harsh and biting against hers as she desperately tore at and unbuttoned his shirt. It was a blur of heat that he could barely see through, the crash and break of whatever they stumbled into white noise in the background as he bit his way down her skin to bury his face in her stomach with her fingers twisted through his hair.

It started too late and ended too soon.

She breathed the words _Condom _against my lips and I barely tore away to get one, my fingers trembling as I reached for the foil like I was a seventeen year old virgin again with the girl of my dreams.

Only the last part was true.

She rolled off the mattress and was violently ill into a garbage can, gasping and panting against the sick. I threw myself back over the bed to her side and ran my fingers back through her hair as she trembled violently, gasping low in the near silent room.

Sorry.

She barely murmured the word and I swept my fingers through her strands to hold them back from her face and tenderly kissed her bare shoulder.

It's alright.

We remained like that for a moment. My fingers combing through her hair soothingly and my lips occasionally pressed to her skin in half hearted attempts to see how long I could go without touching her.

There were half seconds between each kiss.

I wasn't sure how long it was before she pulled away. It felt like forever and at the same time felt like only seconds had passed. She pulled on her shirt with poor excuses and apologises, buttoning up her jeans and leaving with every inch of the room and my skin still imprinted with the memory that was there and always would be.

The broken plant in the hallway. The shattered glass in my bedroom. The tangled, sweaty sheets of my bed. The bite marks that sharpened purple on my skin.

All her. And now all me.

I tried to tell her. Found her when she was alone and tried to give her the speech that I had rehearsed a thousand times and faltered on the words each time because they rang so hollow to how I actually felt. To how she actually made me feel. What words could never sum up.

That we belonged together. That she was perfection to my flaw. Every right to my wrong.

I told her I wasn't perfect. That I was reckless. That I got too angry. That I was broken and none to carefully put back together. But I cared about her. I needed her. I could keep her safe. I could make her happy.

It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.

Ryan didn't notice. He was too in love. Where love made everything clearer to me it blinded him in contrast. She was all he saw. All he thought, knew and breathed. She was all he was and she was all I had.

I'm not exactly sure when he found out.

He stumbled into work drunk, his eyes red and his clothes dishevelled with a crazed look in his eyes like a man who had been broken and broken again.

Do you know what it's like to find out that your best friend fucked your fiancé?

His words were slurred but everyone heard them. Everyone saw as he stumbled over to me with a look in his eyes like he was half mad, a near maniacal laugh on his lips.

Oh ... wait. You wouldn't know. Because you're the best friend that fucked my fiancé.

The next thing I knew was pure agony as Ryan punched him as hard as he could. I doubled over coughing as the crowd gathered shuffled uncomfortably as Ryan swayed, holding onto the glass wall of the lab with shaking fingers.

There's one thing you should know ... one thing, one rule that you don't break. You don't fuck another man's girl.

I didn't bother to correct him. Tell him that we hadn't had sex. That we had gotten close and that it was somehow worse because the what if's of the scenario still played through my head whenever I didn't try hard enough to keep them at what if's.

I stumbled to my feet, a fire in my stomach and my vision blurred with pain before he hit me again. I hit the floor hard, not sure if I could stand back up. Not wanting to. It made more sense if I just laid here and died.

Get up. Come on. If you're able to fuck my girl then you're able to at least stand up to me when the truth comes out.

I crawled back up to my feet, grasping for the lab wall with uneasy fingers as I stood swaying with the pain that seemed to cut my gut in half.

I mean its one thing to ...

He trailed off, his eyes suddenly wide in horror as if a thought has suddenly occurred to him. A missing piece of the puzzle had finally fallen into place. He turned to me, his eyes now alive and broken in pure hatred.

You son of a bitch.

He tackled me. The glass wall of the lab shattered against my back as we fell back through it with the shards of glass crunched and broken beneath us. Then he was hitting me.

And I was hitting him back.

Everything broke through me. Every moment I had to watch them together, hear him gush about how much he loved her, how happy she made him while I was forced to smile like I was alright when I felt like glass was being grinded into my throat.

I hit him for every moment she smiled at him. Every moment they kissed. Every moment they made love. Every moment that she loved him instead of loving me.

Ryan! Eric! Stop!

Hands pulled us apart, forcing us to our feet and I could see his shirt torn and stained with blood, a cut splitting the side of his head and the satisfaction that I made it. Horatio was holding me back, Walter with his fingers digging into Ryan's arm as he struggled to break free and throw himself at me again.

But it wasn't either of them that had yelled at us to stop.

Through my eye that I could already feel swelling shut I could see Lindsay standing apart from the crowd. Her eyes open in horror and her hand on the softened curve of her stomach.

She was pregnant.

All the times I hadn't noticed. The way she would turn her back to me when she saw me coming, step behind a desk when I brought in evidence, pull at the loosened fabric of her shirt to make it fall even more loosely around her.

She was carrying his child. And he thought it was mine.

She went to him first. In a cell separated from mine I could hear their voices loud but not enough to decipher words from them. I paced through the bars, ignoring the glances co workers sent my way whenever they passed. How many times had I shoved suspects behind these bars? How many times had I thought that I might one day be behind them?

She came to me next.

It was so obvious to me now that I couldn't see how I had ever not noticed. It was the swell of her stomach, the healthier look to her eyes and the glow under her skin that reminded me how long she had wanted a baby. How after two miscarriages she had almost given up on every having one.

How I had sometimes fantasised about it one day being mine.

She didn't say anything. She waited for me to say something. But there was nothing to say. Words fell too hollow.

What did you tell him?

She hadn't told him everything. One of them had missed details and I was at the sudden brink of madness to find out which she had missed. Which she had told him.

How she had summed up what had been going on as a reminder to myself that it wasn't all one sided.

She looked away with tears in her eyes and I bit my lip to keep from reaching out and brushing them across her cheek. To so easily remove trace of the hurt as I once had been able to. To be the cure to her pain. Not the cause.

I told him I was in love with you.

I froze. The words were so quiet they could have been something else and I had misheard her in my heart and minds pathetic attempt to hear what I had for years been dying for her to say. But they weren't.

I was in love with you.

She looked back at me, her tears crystallized in her eyes and broken over her eyes lashes. She looked so fragile. So beautiful. So much like the woman I loved. The woman I would sacrifice everything for if only I would ask.

If only it would make her happy.

Linds ...

I murmur her old nickname affectionately and take a step closer, my fingers outreached to wipe away her tears and hold her. Hold her until she stopped crying. Stopped trembling. Stopped hurting. Until I could tell her too how much I loved her. That I loved her over and over and over from the beginning until the end of time and longer. And wilder. More deep.

Words fell too hollow.

But she pulled back, pulled away from me and stepped back to the door with the police officer on the other side to open it upon her command.

I'm sorry.

She turned to the officer who quickly unlocked the door with a jangle of keys and she pushed it open and rushed past him.

And away from me. 


End file.
